Quoting LTC8K6 (Reply 213): So, you could theoretically kill everyone else aboard by depressurization at 45K, program your disappearance flight, and then kill yourself? The plane then flies the route until the engines quit?

Quoting 7BOEING7 (Reply 227): Better yet, program your "disappearance" route, depressurize at the altitude you're at (FL350 works just as well) and don't put on your oxygen mask. You're feeling real good in about 25 seconds and the passengers run out of oxygen soon after that. Engines eventually run out of fuel and the airplane crashes in the middle of the IO where it will never be found.

This is actually a very plausible theory. The whole sequence of the events would be:
- Incapacitate the other pilot
- Turn off transponder
- Turn off ACARS transmissions
- Program waypoints all the way to the Indian Ocean avoiding primary radar coverage
- Depressurize the plane and don't take oxygen mask. The pilot will die first and everybody else in half an hour or so
- The plane will crash once the fuel runs out

If the plane has followed waypoints and routes all the way to the crash, it should be possible to find out which waypoints and thus routes correlate with the satellite pings. And that's probably what the investigators already have figured out.

Quoting celestar (Reply 249): Tomnod

I thought the Tomnod maps only covered water?

Quoting celestar (Reply 249):

Wings don't seem to match a 777.

Quoting flyorski (Reply 244): I found a very good article on one theory for MH370. A simple explanation, such as fire is seemingly the most likely in my view. https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13cv1gohsmbv5jmy221vrfyiz3vdhbop04

Except there are several holes in that theory.

1.) if it was a fire as he suspects, then the plane would not have flown for another 7 hours, it would have crashed prior to 7 hours and 3,675 miles.
2.) the plane followed specific waypoints. If there was a fire, the pilot would not be programming in waypoints or manually flying by waypoints beyond (west of) Langkawi which he claims was the diversion airport.

Quote: I apologize for not taking all the time to finish this thread, but I run across this thread and not sure if it has been posted. Apparently, the aeronautical engineering student in Taiwan, while browsing through tons of satellite photo, found an image, taken by Tomnod, under photo number Map654342, indicate an aeroplane with its rudder broken in the middle of a jungle, presumably somewhere in the Indonesian jungle.... there was no lowering of landing hear and no leading edge deployment and it appears there is no airfield near-by. Given this is reported, ironically in Sina.com - a PRC Chinese portal, I have doubts but someone knowledgable could see if they can dig out Tomnod and confirm this photo - it stated that Tomnod keep photo data at every photo and they would know the location of this photo taken.. Emm, how puzzling can this be now.. http://mil.news.sina.com.cn/2014-03-18/1134769405.html

^ perhaps a plane photographed in flight...

[Edited 2014-03-17 21:36:17]

Quoting celestar (Reply 249): Tomnod, under photo number Map654342, indicate an aeroplane with its rudder broken in the middle of a jungle, presumably somewhere in the Indonesian jungle

...Or.... Flying OVER said jungle. Lots of those airliners from above on satellite images.

Regarding the Sanity Check...

Quoting rcair1 (Reply 77): A fire broke out that incapacitated passengers and crew - but allowed to aircraft to fly on it's own till starvation.

I don't know that a cockpit fire would necessarily have incapacitated passengers and crew. It could have left navigation and communications systems inoperable and flight control systems crippled to the point that the airplane was flyable but unable to land, once the fire had been brought under control by crew and passengers.

I doubt that the plane could have flown for hours with a fire raging out of control, but with the fire put out, even a perfectly able crew could have struggled mightily to control the aircraft's path--lost over the ocean on a moonless night with engines permanently stuck at cruise thrust, at the mercy of the wind.

This is what the aftermath of a 777-200 cockpit fire looks like. It was sudden and the crew had to retreat from the cockpit quickly. Even with all that fancy communications gear in the cockpit, the first officer ended up running down to the apron to borrow a handheld radio to call in the emergency. What if that fire had started in flight?

I have few questions. Thanks in advance!

-Does ACARS monitor transponder activity?
-Would ACARS have sent a message if transponder was turned off?
-Also, even though ACARS sends reports every 30 min, should a system fail or some issue emerges, would it relay the information immediately or wait for next reporting time?

Quoting SSTeve (Reply 254):

Yeah it does look like the airplane was in flight.

I don't have time to do a full Chinese to English translation, but the article did say it is missing the rudder, signs of forest scratching which indicate a plausible airplane on the ground, located north west of Sumatra.....
Not sure why, but I seems to tell the wing is definitely not an AIRBUS A330 and it appears, in my eyes, a B777.
Checked again, the post was done at 11.38am on 3/18 and we are now 12.45pm
I was hoping someone can check on this satellite company under the MAP number to double confirm this.
Anyway, my prayers to all the victims. I really feel bad for all of the them plus their immediate families.

Quoting WingedMigrator (Reply 256): This is what the aftermath of a 777-200 cockpit fire looks like. It was sudden and the crew had to retreat from the cockpit quickly. Even with all that fancy communications gear in the cockpit, the first officer ended up running down to the apron to borrow a handheld radio to call in the emergency. What if that fire had started in flight?

Funny how the MH370 debate has even spread to that page.

Hard to imagine a plane flying for 7.5 hours with that kind of damage.

It looks more like a Fokker in flight to me.

Quoting Finn350 (Reply 250): This is actually a very plausible theory. The whole sequence of the events would be: - Incapacitate the other pilot - Turn off transponder - Turn off ACARS transmissions - Program waypoints all the way to the Indian Ocean avoiding primary radar coverage - Depressurize the plane and don't take oxygen mask. The pilot will die first and everybody else in half an hour or so - The plane will crash once the fuel runs out If the plane has followed waypoints and routes all the way to the crash, it should be possible to find out which waypoints and thus routes correlate with the satellite pings. And that's probably what the investigators already have figured out.

The nice thing about this theory is that it actually matches the few things we do know:
-sequence of events
-absence of communication
-length of flight
-absence of wreckage
And it does this without having to evoke fanciful schemes like shadowing another plane or hiding under a volcano.

Rcair. Thank you for the sanity check post. I haven't read any threads on the mh370 crash. And rarely follow the news reports, So this was a good synopsis

Quoting SimonDanger (Reply 160): Someone help me out with this one: If we assume that the U.S. has spy satellites with infrared sensing capabilities, and that the EGT of these engines (RR Trent 800?) is maybe 1,000+ degrees F, compared to low background temps, then what are the chances of an archieved sat. image being stored somewhere? Or are these types of satellites only tasked on specific missions? I've read somewhere else that we do have satellites which are capable of picking up missile launches anywhere in the world.

Short answer, not likely, The NRO owns all the satellites, they prioritize the incoming requirements from all the "data seekers" and the satellites are tasked for specific missions. So unless one of the satellites was specifically looking for what you were stating, it is unlikely that there is any archive to research.

Quoting Tapir (Reply 202): "Investigations into the flight simulator taken from the missing pilot's home showed a software for five practice runaways, including one belonging to the United States, Berita Harian reported today." Source:- http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/m...-mh370-pilots-simulator-says-paper Or this how news get distorted?

A person using flight simulator will obviously use some sort of airport/runways. And why will an enthusiast practise on the runways in the neighbourhood that he is familiar with? I don't see anything wrong with the pilot simulating airports around the world that he is not familiar with. Doesn't anyone with a simulator do the same??

Quoting celestar (Reply 259): I don't have time to do a full Chinese to English translation, but the article did say it is missing the rudder, signs of forest scratching which indicate a plausible airplane on the ground, located north west of Sumatra..... Not sure why, but I seems to tell the wing is definitely not an AIRBUS A330 and it appears, in my eyes, a B777. Checked again, the post was done at 11.38am on 3/18 and we are now 12.45pm I was hoping someone can check on this satellite company under the MAP number to double confirm this. Anyway, my prayers to all the victims. I really feel bad for all of the them plus their immediate families.

Something's not right. Even if that is the plane, is it plausible to land a 777 still half full of fuel in the rain forest at night without a huge fireball erupting? Assuming that can be done--as suggested by the photo--the crash looks survivable. It's 11 days now, shouldn't someone have crawled out of the jungle by now?

[Edited 2014-03-17 21:56:20]

Quoting Finn350 (Reply 250): This is actually a very plausible theory.

I once had a friend who committed suicide. We'd all tried to help him, but we failed. All of us felt guilty and wished that we'd done more for him.

Thing is, with hindsight his problem was obvious. Unsmiling, 'distant,' not saying much, and above all 'depressed.'

From the photographs on the Net, neither of the pilots have that 'look.' The Captain looks pretty warm-hearted and competent, the First Officer looks smiling and optimistic. Difficult to believe that either of them could commit suicide - especially when they would have been taking hundreds of passengers with them.

Therefore I can't really believe any sort of 'pilot suicide' theory. That really only leaves the 'hijack theory.' Presumably carried out by passengers who somehow managed to get to the flight-deck?

Going on from there, excluding suicide, only two possibilities appear to remain. Either the hijackers weren't very competent/experienced, and managed to crash the aeroplane 'in the ditch' - or they WERE indeed competent enough to fly the aeroplane to an unauthorised destination like rural Afghanistan, and land it?

We'll probably know quite soon if the latter theory turns out to be true. Lots of ransom demands...........

This would be a bizarre pilot suicide. Again, if you want to crash in the water, why go to the Indian Ocean. If you want to make a statement, why not hit the Petronas Tower?

Everything is possible, of course, but a lot of conclusions seem to be being drawn from "facts" that are a lot less reliable than other facts that are more reliable. It was completely freaking obvious that nobody would have any way of knowing exactly when ACARS was turned off. Just none. They would know when its last transmission was and the time at which it should-have-but-didn't make a new one, but nothing more. So ALL that theorizing based on the ACARS being turned off before the "good night" and then the transponder being turned off after that was just completely wrong. They both could have been turned off after the good night, which is just as plausible based on what we now know.

I think we'll find that the speculation about the plane being flown above its service ceiling will also turn out to be totally wrong. Primary radar doesn't do a stellar job of determining precise altitudes, which is one reason we have transponders. Also, the significance of exceeding the service ceiling seems to be all wrong in these theories. If the thing went to 45,000 feet with a significant load, I have to think the coffin-corner would be very narrow, and it would have a hard time staying in the air, or even getting to that altitude. (Vis Pinnacle). There's no significant benefit to going that high before depressurizing. You can get the pax very easily at 35,000, so that makes no sense. If the altitude registered was actually 45,000, that speaks to me more of a wild fight for control of the aircraft, or a mistake made by an inexperienced person trying to hand-fly the thing at night with no outside reference. Deductions and inferences from these "facts" just aren't helpful.

Much better to create a hierarchy of facts based upon their perceived reliability as they stand alone, and then see how those pieces fit an existing theory or lead towards a knew one, and wait a long time before "promoting" a stray fact to a more reliable one just because it fits better into the puzzle.

What we have seem like wayward bits of data that only should be considered if they later fit into a theory that has a lot of proven facts, like the stray primary images after last secondary radar contact with the plane. Those seemed to be a red herring at first, but now SEEM to have some validity. But in the end, they may not.

Also, it seems that looking at satellite handshake signals is a very, very new procedure in aircraft accident investigations, and the deductions that have been made in that regard may turn out, upon further reflection, to be totally, totally wrong. A wayward bit of software in the satellite communication program could be creating phantom records of handshakes, for example. As a very crude and potentially implausible example, we may find that what are thought to be "records" of handshakes may be guesstimates by the satellite of where to look for the next handshake. But when complex systems and the records they create are being analyzed for purposes for which they were not intended, noise intentionally or unintentionally introduced into the system may produce records from which seeminly-plausible deductions are actually inaccurate.

One thing is for certain: once the actual facts are known (and many will be, eventually), we will be very surprised by which pieces of data actually have significance, and how they actually fit into the overall picture, just as happened with Air France. They could see indications of stuff (bending of catering carts), but how the a/c got to that point was something that nobody ever would have guessed (bunkie pulling stick full back in total-manual mode and stalling the aircraft, and continuing in a deep stall at a time when the aircraft had recovered from the loss of airspeed data and was perfectly capable of flying itself; captain not taking his seat while problem was being worked, etc. etc.). Or Colgan Air -- weather, icing, stalled T-tail???? -- nope, experienced (by the way) Captain made completely-inappropriate control inputs when faced with an emergency, stalled the aircraft, and died.

[Edited 2014-03-17 22:17:32]

Quoting NAV30 (Reply 266):

The problem with your observation is that you're basing it off your own experience. Everyone's experience is different and not all suicides are alike. There are plenty of people who are the complete opposite of that and could never be imagined for 1 second to be in a situation where they'd be thinking of taking their own life.

Quoting wjcandee (Reply 267): This would be a bizarre pilot suicide. Again, if you want to crash in the water, why go to the Indian Ocean.

It does seem bizarre, but as I said earlier the stigma associated with suicide could certainly motivate someone to go through great lengths to hide it. And for a capable individual the scenario laid out by Finn350 may not even be that complex.

For anyone questioning the cockpit door? There is no way short of explosives to get through a Boeing (although designed by someone else) door. A buddy and I installed the first cockpit door after (9/11) for the company designing the door for the 737. We had engineers, safety, flight ops, management watching us do this job and to see the end product. What a mind wrecking event. It was on a 737-200 and much more extensive then a -300 or NG. With that said, these doors are the real thing. The door posts are mounted to major structure, they are impregnable except for explosives. If I didn't have passenger intervention though, I could get in. I.E. no one else on the airplane. I won't expound any more because it is just not possible in real life. If a flight officer leaves he can be locked out never to return. Just hit reject on the cockpit door code.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/pilot...raise-fresh-questions-missing-jet/

"The latest now on the investigation into Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. There were more questions raised today about the pilot himself after reports confirmed he attended the trial of a leading jailed political opposition figure just hours before the flight."

interesting development.

Quoting wjcandee (Reply 267):

I think 45000 feet ascend can't be seen without further "uneven descend to 23000". It was the statement from investigating authorities. It's a likely scenario, that the plane could go at 45000, stall there and brought back to stable at 23000.

Quoting 737tdi (Reply 270): it is just not possible in real life. If a flight officer leaves he can be locked out never to return. Just hit reject on the cockpit door code.

Do any major carriers leave one person alone in the cockpit anymore? My understanding is that American carriers, at least, put an f/a in there for precisely that reason.

Quoting celestar (Reply 259): I don't have time to do a full Chinese to English translation, but the article did say it is missing the rudder, signs of forest scratching which indicate a plausible airplane on the ground, located north west of Sumatra..... Not sure why, but I seems to tell the wing is definitely not an AIRBUS A330 and it appears, in my eyes, a B777. Checked again, the post was done at 11.38am on 3/18 and we are now 12.45pm I was hoping someone can check on this satellite company under the MAP number to double confirm this. Anyway, my prayers to all the victims. I really feel bad for all of the them plus their immediate families.

If you look for the said map on Tomnod, you can clearly see that the airplane is located 100-150 meters away from private houses, I really doubt that if a plane the size of 777 would crash in your back yard and you wont report it and to top all that, there is no damage to the woods whatsoever. The airplane was captured in flight imo.

Viper911

By the way, the New York Times (and Fox News) breathless reporting on the aircraft being flown by the FMS seems like a data point blown way out of proportion.

If I understand what they are saying (because they sure as hell don't), it has somehow been discovered that a waypoint was entered into the FMS, presumably-intentionally as opposed to accidentally, that would have caused the turn seen on primary radar after the ADS-B was switched off. If I further understand, they are determining this because the stray waypoint was reported to the ground by ACARS. Okay, swell. That might be significant because it would then mean that this new waypoint was entered prior to the "okay, goodnight" because the last ACARS transmission preceded that voice communication.

In a perfect world, you might be able to deduce something from that. But, it could also be that a developing emergency caused a pilot to enter a waypoint back towards land, and that wasn't communicated by radio because they weren't ready to do so. (Agreed, however, that typically one would use the autopilot heading select or take manual control in an emergency, but, hey, what about those guys in the sim that saw an MD80 coming up the beach at them and tried to get out of the way by punching an altitude change into the autopilot [which, by design, couldn't have been executed fast enough to get out of the way]? People who use a lot of automation do weird things when startled...) Also, since the investigators don't seem to know WHEN the waypoint was entered, it doesn't mean that it isn't simply a mistake, which the aircraft then dutifully-followed. I would also like to know whether any other waypoints were reported to be entered, because if you're programming in a route to a new place, you would likely enter more than one waypoint. I don't see why all this isn't consistent with a co-pilot sitting in the cockpit with a gun to his head being told to enter a series of waypoints by a hijacker who had been provided with that list of waypoints by his masters. When time to hand over to Vietnamese ATC, with a gun to his head, he reports in "okay, goodnight". I'm just not seeing any conclusive evidence that anything happened that only pilots could do, or that only pilots could know how to do. A list of waypoints which pilots are told to program in makes just as much sense as renegade pilots entering waypoints.

Anyway, more useless info...

Quoting wjcandee (Reply 275):

To add for the purpose of objectivity, we don't know if waypoints were entered before "all right, good night", since next ACARS transmission was expected at 9:37. We simply didn't get it, so capture, FMC altering, squawk on stand-by and ACARS off could happen after last communication to ATC at equal probability with that it was done before. Even more probable, that it happened after "all right , good night", if you consider time period: there were 12 minutes available before all right good night and 18 minutes after this communication but before expected ACARS. So chances here are 40% it happened before and 60% it happened after.

[Edited 2014-03-17 22:59:52]

[Edited 2014-03-17 23:03:24]

Quoting rcair1 (Reply 77):

I think the fact the plane dropped from 45000 to 23000 can be substantial since it could be explained by stall and leveling...it could be added to sanity check paragraph "Hypoxia and pressurization"
Thanks

[Edited 2014-03-17 23:09:27]

Quoting virgin744 (Reply 271):

That's a bit of old news over in Malaysia. The latest spin is the Capt is the uncle of the opposition leader's daughter-in-law. Just to clarify, the pro government paper itself estimated that 80% pilots of MAS are the opposition supporters. Therefore, you cannot read too much into his political affiliation.

Why is everyone only considering fire? Airbus was struggling with software bugs for a while with cockpit displays going blank, etc.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB121684995725478651

Recommendations released by the National Transportation Safety Board Wednesday cite 49 incidents over the years in which electrical problems caused various cockpit displays on widely-used Airbus A319 and A320 to suddenly stop functioning and temporarily go blank during flight. According to the board, seven of those incidents resulted in the simultaneous loss of all six electric cockpit displays -- something that safety experts originally believed was virtually impossible.

If a similar fault would occur in a 777 at night over the ocean, pilot disorientation could quickly set in. I can see how the pilot would have trouble controlling the aircraft in darkness over the ocean with almost no point of reference. That could explain the dramatic direction and altitude changes. Once he stabilized the plane and leveled out, he continued to fly - looking for land until the fuel ran out over the Pacific Ocean...

Based on the latest updates that there was no progressive disabling of instruments this is my best guess.

Quoting celestar (Reply 249): Apparently, the aeronautical engineering student in Taiwan, while browsing through tons of satellite photo, found an image, taken by Tomnod, under photo number Map654342, indicate an aeroplane with its rudder broken in the middle of a jungle, presumably somewhere in the Indonesian jungle

Well, there does appear to be a plane on that Tomnod tile:

http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/654342

However, assuming the scale is correct, it appears to be too small to be a 777. My guess is this is just a plane in flight, and the appearance of a damaged tail is because the tail is in fact, painted black. The horizontal stabilizers look fine and there is even a fine line of the vertical stabilizer which also appears undamaged. Edit: Also note the complete lack of any disturbed vegetation surrounding the "crash site".



[Edited 2014-03-17 23:11:35]

Quoting wjcandee (Reply 273): Do any major carriers leave one person alone in the cockpit anymore? My understanding is that American carriers, at least, put an f/a in there for precisely that reason.

I'm sorry I can not answer that question. I just don't know. I only know about my carrier. And then only because I am allowed to fly cockpit and I fly non-rev a lot. I never see the crew come out of the cockpit. With thousands and thousands of miles I have never seen one of our crew leave the cockpit, Ever.


They must have huge bladders. LOL. Seriously though, I fly observer/mech many times a month, traveling to repair aircraft and the crew never exits the cockpit. Granted they are only an hour to 3 hour flights. An 8 hour flight would definitely require a trip to the lav..

Straits Times reports that the investigators have re-enacted the flight path MH 370 with an identical Boeing 777-200.

http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking...370s-flight-path-official-20140316

Quote: Investigators probing the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370 piloted an identical Boeing 777-200 on the missing plane's suspected flight path, in a re-enactment confirming their belief that it banked west, a senior Malaysian military official said on Sunday.

Quoting dandelany (Reply 280):

Shape of wings is completely different, look at the angle of front edge at which it approaches the fuselage. Doesn't look the same at all...
And yes, most likely, it's in flight and tail is dark color.

[Edited 2014-03-17 23:20:09]

Quoting dandelany (Reply 280):

I believe the aircraft could be tilted downward (nose down) hanging over a hillside.

That may fit it better, but due to the black tail I don't think it is MH.

Quoting k83713 (Reply 272): I think 45000 feet ascend can't be seen without further "uneven descend to 23000". It was the statement from investigating authorities. It's a likely scenario, that the plane could go at 45000

I think 45,000ft is highly unlikely, but be that as it may. We are talking about rough estimates here based on primary radar data. Suffice it to say there were some significant and abrupt changes in altitude, probably not quite as extreme as the numbers suggest. I do no believe that the flight crew deliberately initiated the flight plan deviations (I agree with the Israelis in that their profiles don't match those of potential terrorists, nor does either one of them appear suicidal). I think it is possible that an intruder entered the flight deck, and maybe the captain tried to throw him off balance by flying some wild maneuvers. It's also possible that soemone else had taken over controls, someone with knowledge how to operate a FMC, but without much practical flying experience, who caused erratic altitude changes during a moment, when the autopilot was disengaged.

Maybe a bit of a doom scenario and i would be very surprised if. But next week here in the netherlands in the city where i live in, the hague, the nuclear summit will be hold from 23-26 march. With 43 world leaders including obama, the president of china, france, germany, england, japan etc will be there. Gosh i never thought i would be dragged into this fantasy stories and conspiracy.

Quoting EVAAIRBR076 (Reply 286):

Well, they'd have to re-fuel it.

And presumably military and security forces will now be very alert to suspicious airliners.

Quoting EVAAIRBR076 (Reply 286):

You may want to take vacation just in case ...  

Quoting NAV30 (Reply 266): From the photographs on the Net, neither of the pilots have that 'look.' The Captain looks pretty warm-hearted and competent, the First Officer looks smiling and optimistic. Difficult to believe that either of them could commit suicide - especially when they would have been taking hundreds of passengers with them.

This lady didn't have the 'look' either, and had a lot to live for:

http://www.skywaybridge.com/current.htm#140205

She was married, with 4 children, ages 8, 7, 5 and 4 months, she worked as an Occupational Therapist and was passionate about helping children.

''a wonderful person who was always there for her children, family and devoted to her work. She will truly be missed by all.''

You just never know... what drives people who seem to have so much going for them to make such a decision.

Everything can seem to be perfect to others from the outside, even in the case of the pilots on MH370, but nothing can be ruled out. Websites like skywaybridge which list suicides and allow for comments from friends and family after the event, show in many cases it was unexpected, sudden and unexplainable. Not every time, but most times.

However, it reaches an entirely different level to be so self-centered in a mission to self-end, to take more than 200 others along with you...



LD4

Quoting dandelany (Reply 280):

I'm sure one will find quite a number of planes on Tomnod, as their pics are taken over several days, mostly much later than the MH370 flight, so finding *it* in flight would be a feat (but maybe one can see it parked somewhere, if only Tomnod's coverage wasn't to very restricted!)

I found this:

http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/639235

to get the coordinates, just replace 'challenge' with 'api' in the URL. You can paste the latitude and longitude numbers (just those) into Google earth/maps or such.



What makes that plane look to white in the satellite picture? Reflection from sunshine?

[Edited 2014-03-17 23:41:31]

[Edited 2014-03-17 23:43:13]

[Edited 2014-03-17 23:47:22]

[Edited 2014-03-18 00:08:08]

Quoting dandelany (Reply 280): However, assuming the scale is correct, it appears to be too small to be a 777.

Also the wrong shape. That's an A320, perhaps an A321.

-Mir

Quoting Mir (Reply 291): Also the wrong shape. That's an A320, perhaps an A321.

Doesn't fit the shape either. Looks more like a F100 to me...

Quoting dandelany (Reply 280): Well, there does appear to be a plane on that Tomnod tile:

Looks like a Jet Airways 737. It even looks like it was 737 style overwing exit arrow markings and the 777-200 does not even have overwing exits.

Quoting rebr (Reply 292): Doesn't fit the shape either. Looks more like a F100 to me...

   or something like it, if it were an A3xx or 7xx the engines would presumably be visible under the wings.

[Edited 2014-03-18 00:20:47]

Quoting 737tdi (Reply 281): With thousands and thousands of miles I have never seen one of our crew leave the cockpit, Ever.

Strange. I've seen it on plenty of your flights. Had it happen a few months ago on ABQ-LAX. They might be less inclined to go if they've got someone riding up front with them since it's like musical chairs.

Quoting 737tdi (Reply 281): They must have huge bladders. LOL.

I did hear one of your captains say they get to a certain zen state once they hit 4+ hours.

Quoting chaseus1 (Reply 93): But the Petronas Towers could have been a target too...

Targeting the towers in the dead of night where occupancy would be at its lowest point? Certainly possible, but an odd scenario for terrorism.

Quoting TheRedBAron (Reply 146): I dont think they overflew the peninsula at a low altitude at night and on a moonless day.... its way too risky and difficult, and if your ultimate goal is suicide its way too complex and hard to execute without somebody doing something about it.

If you've managed to incapacitate the other pilot, have locked yourself in the cockpit, and your "ultimate goal is suicide" there is virtually nothing anyone can do about it. Where is the risk? You ruin your goal of suicide by accidentally slamming into a mountain?

Quoting celestar (Reply 249): Apparently, the aeronautical engineering student in Taiwan, while browsing through tons of satellite photo, found an image, taken by Tomnod, under photo number Map654342, indicate an aeroplane with its rudder broken in the middle of a jungle, presumably somewhere in the Indonesian jungle.... there was no lowering of landing hear and no leading edge deployment and it appears there is no airfield near-by

Was that aircraft VTOL capable, or how did it come to rest fully intact in the jungle? Sorry, not meaning to mock the guy who found the image... at least he's actively trying to do something.

Quoting wjcandee (Reply 267): This would be a bizarre pilot suicide. Again, if you want to crash in the water, why go to the Indian Ocean.

There could be several reasons for wanting to plant the aircraft in the depths of the Indian Ocean, and they've been brought up here multiple times.

Quoting Finn350 (Reply 282): Straits Times reports that the investigators have re-enacted the flight path MH 370 with an identical Boeing 777-200.

Not sure that article is accurate. In one of the last 2-3 press conferences they said they had done this using a simulator. As the article based its information on what "a senior Malaysian military official said on Sunday", I don't think anything has changed since then.

I do have a question, since the plane sent about 7 pings (every hour) to the satellite, shouldn't we have 7 loci that might somehow give a clearer picture on how the plane travelled? eg. if the plane flew without any change in direction we'd get equally spaced loci, and the distance between the loci will give us an idea of the heading at which the plane is flying? And if the direction changes we'd get loci that vary in spacing but if the plane didn't change heading very often for a certain period of time we can sort of guess that it travelled straight for a few hours.

Quoting sejtam (Reply 290): I'm sure one will find quite a number of planes on Tomnod, as their pics are taken over several days, mostly much later than the MH370 fligh

In fact with all the search going on, I wonder no-one has spotted pics of the search airraft and ships yet.

Those 2 Iranian guys were brought up on CNN tonight, by a forensic psychologist...and he then stated...with reference to them, that China is being very quiet.